


don't know what i've done (or if i like what i've begun)

by notbang



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, female friendships are very strange, mentions of Valencia/Beth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-19 14:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22712074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notbang/pseuds/notbang
Summary: Valencia follows Roxane Gay on Twitter. She’s read the op-eds Rebecca shares on Facebook. She knows about things like internalised misogyny and Catholic guilt and compulsory heterosexuality—kind of. She knows she should be burning her bra and smashing glass ceilings and rejecting the idea of modern matrimony for all its pandering to patriarchal narratives, or something. It’s just that she knows them in an absent, overwhelming kind of way that is so confusingly disconnected from everything she longs for as not some discourse in twelve point font on a page but a living, breathing person that wants things with every fibre of her being and contains multitudes.After a major life upheaval, Valencia seeks out Paula.
Relationships: Rebecca Bunch/Valencia Perez, Valencia Perez & Paula Proctor
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51
Collections: Crazy Ex Girlfriend Valentine Exchange 2020





	don't know what i've done (or if i like what i've begun)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skyling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyling/gifts).



> Title from Missy Higgins' [Where I Stood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcXX1RTAA0s), which fits this whole thing pretty well if you stand on your head and squint, I guess.

Valencia can’t remember the last time she actually knocked on someone’s door instead of letting herself in or texting them from the car to announce her arrival.

She hadn't wanted to _ask,_ though—couldn’t take the thought of being told it was too late, and turned away—so instead she’s standing on the doorstep, duffel bag and carry-on pilot case in hand, features forcefully rearranged into something like impatience, as if she’s the one being inconvenienced in this scenario, and not the other way around.

So it’s fair, then, that when the door pulls open Paula is smoothing down her hair where it’s escaped from her ponytail in careless little sweat-curls, pulling her cardigan more tightly closed around her and squinting out into the night with an air of irritation and confusion.

Until she clocks Valencia and her face is suddenly composed of hesitation and panic, and Valencia’s chest feels all at once like an ocean—a bottomless, ever-shifting sea that’s pulling her down inside herself, filling her lungs up until she can’t breathe.

“Rebecca already told you,” she says flatly, and turns to leave. 

“Well, _yes_ ,” Paula says, propelling into action with an apologetic inflection of _no duh._ She follows Valencia down the driveway as she politely guffaws. “Did you really expect her not to blab? C’mon, do you even know her at all?”

It’s true—she’d known this, driving over here, that she will have long been beaten to the proverbial punch. It hadn't stopped the decision percolating inside her with some strange kind of certainty, even before she’d properly processed what destination she’d punched into her ride share app. 

Valencia crosses her arms, and tosses her hair back with a delicate sniff, considering her options. “I can stay in Brendan’s old room, right?”

“I mean, if you want to sleep on a hardwood desk with a copy of Werner’s Real Estate Law for a pillow, go ahead. God knows I’ve passed out on it once or twice. Otherwise there’s a perfectly good guest room made up down the hall.”

“Fine. I’ll be needing tea. Something herbal—it’s too late for caffeine. Preferably with filtered water. I’ll meet you on the porch once I’m settled in.”

Paula’s expression shifts, then, into a mix of weariness and amusement. “Okay. I guess I will see you out there.”

“It’s unseasonably chilly,” Valencia adds, grip tightening around the handle of her duffel as she braces herself to actually step inside. “So you should probably bring blankets.”

“Oh-kay.”

Paula's guest room looks exactly how Valencia supposes she should have expected, all dusty florals and some approximation of vintage furniture hugging a lumpy looking bed. There’s a calico mouse wearing a pink tulle tutu propped up against the pillows, and Valencia feels like she’s been checked in to some country road bed and breakfast that boasts nature walks in its brochure. 

The party planner in Valencia tries to find it comforting, and quaint; the every day Valencia that considers herself something of a trendsetter is in the mood to muster only disdain.

Paula’s still steeping tea and fussing around in her pantry when Valencia emerges from the bathroom, so she purses her lips and heads for the patio door, pulling the scratchy throw she’d swiped from the armchair in the bedroom tighter around herself to brace against the cold. She forgoes the outdoor setting with its wrought iron table and chairs in favour of the love seat, taking advantage of the extra space to draw her legs up beside her and hug one knee to her chest.

“Scott started hiding all the junk food after my heart attack, but you looked like you needed some comfort carbs, so I have some temptingly low-cal water crackers, carrot sticks _julienne_ and light French onion dip. Knock yourself out.”

Valencia doesn’t feel like eating, what with the relentless tide going through the motions inside of her. She bypasses the unappetising grazing plate and reaches for a mug instead, an oversized porcelain with a chip in the top of the handle. “You know, you should really rake your yard—all those dry leaves are a fire hazard. And your rose bushes need pruning.”

Valencia doesn’t know the first thing about keeping roses—her experience with flowers is for the most part post-picking—but something about the leaf litter and unkempt hedges makes her fingers twitch, like there’s too many things out of place.

“Okay, little Miss N.A.,” Paula says, hand on hip, arching an eyebrow in a way that Valencia wants to take ownership for, even though she knows Paula has always been perfectly capable of summoning her own sass. “I’ll take that under advisement. I put in a lot of twelve hour days, and I don’t exactly have a lot of spare time for gardening. So are you done, or should we relocate to my other yard? You know, the one I keep in pristine condition in case the Queen of England drops by for a scone.”

“Do you think Brendan still has weed here somewhere?” Valencia asks in lieu of acknowledging that yes, she’s being unreasonably critical and yes, she’s absolutely planning on continuing to dance _en pointe_ around the as yet unspoken elephant in the room, or sitting on Paula’s porch, as it were.

Paula fixes her with an unimpressed stare as she pulls out a chair and drops into it, propping her legs up on the seat of another and gingerly taking a stick of carrot as if it’s the last thing on earth she’d like to be eating. “Okay, I’m sorry,” she begins around a mouthful, “but I have to ask. Why did you come _here?_ Why me? Why not, I don’t know—Heather? It seems like the kind of thing she’d be all supportive of.” Valencia arches an eyebrow, and Paula hastens to add with a frustrated sigh, “I’m not saying I’m not going to be supportive. I’m just not exactly… versed in this, is all, whereas Heather looks like she knows a lot about… alternative lifestyles.” Paula winces the second the words are out of her mouth, and Valencia can’t help but twist her lips into something of an amused smile.

Heather also never put a tracker in her shoulder or tried actively to ruin her life, and Valencia thinks that might be part of it—that she sees in her friendship with Paula a similar kind of danger; a wariness for all the times that came before. It’s almost like she needs to remind herself, how adept she’s become at moving past it.

_Female friendships are very strange._

“Wow. You are _really_ bad at this, huh.” She sits up, straightening her spine, the yoga instructor still somewhere inside her focusing on the decompression of each individual vertebrae as it unfurls. “It’s okay. I was bad at it too, for a long time.”

Paula pulls a face, and Valencia’s not sure whether it’s in response to her platitudes or the vegetable she’s currently forcing herself to consume. The older woman sets her drink aside and slides her feet back down to the ground so she can lean forward, her warm hands a comforting squeeze at Valencia’s knees.

“Oh, hon. How are you doing? Really? I heard about you and Beth on Facebook, and I thought about liking the update in support, but I couldn’t decide between the shocked face, the sad face and the love heart. And I know I should have called, or texted, but—”

“Paula, it’s fine,” Valencia says, smoothing out the heather grey fabric of her sweats. “You and I don’t have that kind of relationship. I get it. It’s more of a, see each other at group events and occasionally I show up on your doorstep unannounced kind of deal. It works.”

The thing is, it’s not the first time that she’s done this.

In fact, it feels like a laughably appropriate bookend to her relationship with Beth to be here now, given that Paula was the first person she’d confided in about falling for her in the first place.

_Because you stalked my whole life and objectively know everything about me, right? So if anybody knows this thing I apparently didn’t know about myself, it’d be you, right?_

She’d felt somehow that Heather would be _too_ cool with it, and act like it wasn’t a big deal, when it _was_ a big deal, as far as Valencia was concerned. And Rebecca… 

The idea of telling Rebecca had been unfathomable, at first, knowing all at once she’d be on the receiving end of so much raucous energy; of manic support and questionable advice and some kind of inexplicable reluctance, like she was walking head first into an unspoken _I told you so_ she couldn’t explain.

So she’d come to Paula, just like now, seeking something like the wisdom of her middle age and a comfortably predictable series of _oh_ s escalating in emphasis and inflection as the meaning had sunk in.

_Then I realised, maybe I like women now. And then I realised, maybe I_ like women _now._

All of the breath leaves Valencia in a heavy gust. “But if we’re going to get into that, I’m going to need something a little stronger than chamomile.”

Paula points at her like she’s just been given the go ahead she’s been waiting for all along. “Roger that—I will be back with the wine.”

Valencia tosses back the rest of her tea while Paula's gone like it’s whiskey, wincing on its way down, letting her eyes flutter shut as she draws the warm, fruity aroma deep into her lungs and wills it to offer up exactly the kind of calm it promised on the tin. She briefly considers marching down to the store to demand a refund on her friend’s behalf when every muscle in her body remains drawn as taut as a bowstring.

“Are you even allowed to be drinking?” she asks Paula as an afterthought, once she’s come back with a corkscrew and a dusty bottle of merlot. 

“Hey, I can handle a few glasses of happy juice without keeling over, thank you,” Paula tosses back wryly. “Besides, a glass of red wine a day is supposed to be heart healthy. Google it if you don’t believe me.”

“And two or three?” Valencia prompts.

“I’ve skipped a lot of days! It’ll be fine.”

Valencia _hmm_ s, rolling the crystal stem of the glass between her thumb and forefinger, base balanced against her thigh. After a long silence during which she realises Paula is more than willing to wait her out, she sighs and fills the empty space with, “Beth messaged me today. She wanted to know if she should FedEx me the ring. If it’d be easier.”

Paula’s partway through drawing the bottle back when she says it, and immediately returns it to the rim of Valencia’s glass to increase the pour from two fingers to four. “Oof. That is _cold_.”

“Yeah,” Valencia agrees miserably, wasting no time in taking a large gulp. “Except that it’s not—I know Beth, and I know the way she meant it. She’s just trying to be accommodating, which honestly only infuriates me more. Just because we said this was amicable doesn’t mean she couldn’t throw me a passive aggressive comment to show she’s feeling _something_ about this whole thing, right?”

Paula scoffs appropriately. “Oh, yeah. Who does she think she is, withholding all those snide remarks? Some kind of saint?”

Some kind of pitiful laugh escapes Valencia at that, and she offers up a grateful, though begrudging smile. “Right? I mean, I get it, though. I’m very difficult to hate. Ask all my fans.”

Valencia’s no stranger to anger, but that’s not what she felt when she ended things with Josh, and it’s not what she feels now—instead it’s the nagging feeling of defeat taking root inside of her, and the frustration that’s she’s wasted so much _time._ Because while she’s never quite considered it in such calculated terms before, relationships to her have always been an investment. She’d invested half her life in Josh Chan only for it to turn out to be for nothing, and she’d told herself she’d never make that mistake again—something she’d urged to Beth countless times.

_V, it’s not a waste,_ Beth had insisted before they parted ways, confused when Valencia had expressed the sentiment. _It’s just a period of time that happened, and now you’re ready for what's next. And that’s okay._

She rolls her eyes just thinking about it, and swishes the liquid in her glass.

“I kept looking at the ring box on my dresser every morning and all I could think of was that stupid saying—‘those that can’t wed, plan’. Like I should have known. God, it’s so dramatic, right? Rebecca got left at the altar but I feel like I’m the one that’s cursed.”

_I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to marry you_ , Rebecca had said, in this tiny, embarrassingly earnest voice, the wine-flushed skin of her legs warm against her own, and it had squeezed tight at something deep inside Valencia, the way it sounded like Rebecca remembered all too well what having someone not want to marry you felt like.

“I mean, you’ve only seriously dated two people in your entire life, so. I’m not quite sure we can consider that a pattern yet.”

Valencia knows Paula has a point—that two long term relationships are pretty good odds, actually, even if she’s ended up zero for two at the other side. That she can hardly get up in arms over her track record when Rebecca is _right there_ with her three disaster exes on a seemingly endless rotation, even without taking into consideration Robert and the rest of her life pre-West Covina.

“Being with a woman was supposed to be different. She was supposed to understand me, and what I wanted.”

“Oh honey,” Paula clucks, and the sympathetic grimace is back. “At the end of the day, a woman is still just a person. She’s not a mind reader just because she’s got boobs.”

_Just so you know, that was very gender normative,_ Rebecca’s voice chirps helpfully in Valencia’s head.

Beth _had_ understood her and what she wanted, though, at least in the beginning—how to compliment her without being creepy, how to touch her in a way that was warm and inviting and _wanted_ , that didn’t make her flinch. How to like every imperfect part of her, not just the way she looked. _Nurturing,_ in a way she’d never had.

“Not to be insensitive, or anything, because I know the wound is probably still pretty fresh, but why are you so obsessed with being married, anyway? It's like, a _thing_ with you. I love Scott, don’t get me wrong, but getting married, having kids—for a long time, there, I just felt so bogged down, you know? You’re young, you’re independent, your metabolism is… beyond the limits of my understanding. You’re free! Go out there and be free! All that other stuff isn’t going anywhere.”

She thinks about the speech Rebecca gave at the open mic night, about ending up with someone not being an ending, and how it had been so easy to herald that sentiment for Rebecca without stopping for a second to think about how it applied to her own life. Because she supposes she and Rebecca have that in common—for so long wanting marriage to be that perfect little bow that made their life all tidy and complete, made it make _sense_.

Valencia follows Roxane Gay on Twitter. She’s read the op-eds Rebecca shares on Facebook. She knows about things like internalised misogyny and Catholic guilt and compulsory heterosexuality—kind of. She knows she should be burning her bra and smashing glass ceilings and rejecting the idea of modern matrimony for all its pandering to patriarchal narratives, or something. It’s just that she knows them in an absent, overwhelming kind of way that is so confusingly disconnected from everything she longs for as not some discourse in twelve point font on a page but a living, breathing person that wants things with every fibre of her being and _contains multitudes._

She tries to imagine what her life would look like now if she’d married Josh the way she’d once so desperately wanted. For a dream that had been so clear to her for so long it’s fuzzy and faded now—unable to coexist alongside the presence of Rebecca in her life. Which turns to trying to imagine what life would look like now if Josh hadn’t flaked out the day of her friend’s wedding, and she can’t for the life of her picture that, either.

Valencia wants to blame it on the wine swirling through her head, the way it just slips out with an undignified snort. “God, can you even imagine being married to Rebecca?”

Paula raises her eyebrows, not privy to Valencia’s thought process and subsequently clearly caught off-guard by the non sequitur. “Uh, I don’t know—can _you_?”

Valencia sighs and turns her head away. If Paula’s _asking_ …

They already have the shared ghost of their weddings-that-weren’t between them, a bizarre overlap of what almost was and what could have been, tucked away in a binder she still keeps shoved on a top shelf, an anthology of odes to _what if_ s. There’s some kind of poetry there that she doesn’t want to think too much about, in rhythms and unspoken words that rhyme against themselves, repeating.

Rebecca had been there with her in New York when Valencia tried on her dress, just like Valencia had orchestrated the fittings for Rebecca’s. Just like they had tried on Jayma’s wedding dress between them.

Beth had talked about wearing a tailored tuxedo in midnight blue to their wedding, and after some stipulations on the exact shade Valencia had graciously approved it, pinning the visuals to her Pinterest board in lieu of slotting them behind the divider that had once been designated to Josh. It hadn’t been a puzzle piece she was trying to force to fit anymore—she’d carved out a new space inside herself, and let it breathe.

_Oh, so I see your type now_ , Heather had said the first time she’d met Beth. _Classic aloof black cat meets good-natured golden retriever. You’ve just, like, finally graduated from puppy school._

Valencia hadn’t appreciated the assessment at the time, loathe to acknowledge any similarities between her burgeoning new relationship and its predecessor, but in hindsight she can see Heather’s point. Perhaps in the past she’s been drawn to the sense of security implied by their easiness; mistaken _relaxed_ for _ceding to control._

Beth is the most easy-going person Valencia has ever met. Nothing about Rebecca is easy.

Which is why she’s _really_ at Paula’s house right now, if she’s honest, wearing sweat pants she hasn’t touched since the last time she was newly single and someone kidnapped her to drag her into the desert.

“I don’t need your advice on how I feel about Rebecca romantically,” Valencia says, stiffly. “That’s not why I’m here.”

The slow drag of confusion is still written all over Paula’s features. “Okay.”

Valencia knows she should probably follow that up with some kind of an explanation, but she’s hasn’t arrived at one that bears articulation yet, so instead she turns her attention to topping off her wine glass. “I want,” she begins, then stops, cutting off with a strangled growl. “I want to know how _you_ do it. How you go back to the way things were before.”

Paula’s brows creep up her forehead in incomprehension. “Before what?”

“Before your husband cheated on you with some woman that he works with. Before Rebecca lied to you when she promised she wouldn’t, and pushed somebody off a roof. Before you nearly _died_. Because next to all those things, kissing one of your best friends maybe doesn’t seem like such a big deal in comparison.”

“Okay, well, you just broke off an engagement and moved back to your home town,” Paula points out. “I’d say that’s somewhat of a big deal.”

Valencia’s prevented from arguing by the sound of the sliding door opening, the messy mop of the youngest Proctor’s hair appearing around the glass. 

“Mom, do you know what happened to—” He cuts off when he makes unintentional eye contact with Valencia through his unkempt fringe. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know your scary friend was here.”

Valencia turns to Paula, eyes narrowed.

“I didn’t tell him to call you that,” Paula defends before making a shooing motion in Tommy’s direction. “Inside! Go! Whatever it is, ask your father.”

“Where is he?”

“Up in the study. Probably hiding from my—admittedly very scary—friend. Now go! Get out of here!”

The door slams shut with the careless forcefulness of an impatient teenager, sending the windows rattling and Paula’s eyes fluttering shut in annoyance. Valencia finds something strangely soothing in the way the vibrations transfer through her, as if they're switching her frequency to something new.

Paula channels her irritation into jabbing an off-puttingly beige coloured cracker into the tub of dip. “Anyway. I’m not sure I have an answer to that other than, you don’t? You can’t go back to before. That stuff’s always going to be there. You just have to figure out what’s more important, going forward.”

Valencia grunts out her frustration—a kind of _I figured you’d say that_ noise of dissastifaction that Paula pays no mind to as she wisely shuffles them along to a new topic. 

“So what’s happening with the business, now that you two have… you know. Are you going to get back into events back here?”

The inevitable dissolution of their partnership along with their _partnership_ was one of the many things Beth and Valencia had discussed at length. For all the aspects of their lives that were intertwined, it still stings a little, how smoothly the disentanglement had gone.

“I think I’m done thinking about weddings for awhile. Truly,” Valencia says, crossing her arms. “If someone as good looking as me still can’t make it down the aisle, none of those tragics out there should get to either. Not with any extra help from me, anyway.”

“Well, fair,” Paula concedes, wry. “Though, what’s your current standing on babies? Because Darryl and his latest super sperm are probably approaching baby shower territory. Want me to drop the hint to him and April that you’re back in town?”

“Ugh, Darryl,” Valencia groans. She raps her fingers along the stretch of arm just below her elbow, contemplative. “I _guess_ I shouldn't say no to potential income, given my current state of homelessness. Besides, the crying surcharge I made him agree to offsets the friends and family discount.” She muses for a moment on the idea she’s been toying with—a new challenge to sink her teeth into as she refashions herself anew. One that’s been niggling away inside of her since before Beth packed up her side of the closet. “Actually, I’ve… been thinking about maybe studying again. You finishing law school and Rebecca taking her music lessons and Greg doing his business degree and reopening Serrano’s kind of got me inspired, you know? I do have experience running my own yoga studio, and with all the contacts I have from party planning under my belt I thought I could put that towards something like marketing, or PR.”

Paula regards her over the rim of her glass, too slow to completely mask her skepticism and surprise. “You do realise it’s no walk in the park, right? It’s kind of a big commitment. I mean, it nearly killed me. Literally.”

Valencia shoots Paula the withering look she’s kept in reserved preparation of her friends’ doubt, eyes narrowed, the overly enunciated words all scathing saccharine acid in her mouth. “I’m not an idiot, you know. Just because I like to document my life to share with strangers online and know how to dress to best accentuate my body type doesn’t make me incapable. And for the record, _both_ those things would be relevant to my degree.”

She resists the urge to round it out with a snide remark on the state of her arteries in comparison to Paula’s.

When Valencia had first met Rebecca, her instinctual need to compete with other women had left her wary of her intelligence, left her feeling inferior in the face of threat. Since then she’s come to realise that despite the sometimes overly verbose articulation and the inability to let a teaching moment pass, Rebecca has never once spoken to her like she thought she was stupid, like she was _less than_. Not the way Josh’s friends had so often dismissed her.

“I’ve seen Legally Blonde,” Valencia adds haughtily, “and I could’ve gotten into Harvard if I tried.”

Paula concedes her point with raised hands, a slow nod, and a smile. “You know what—that is probably very true. And I didn’t mean to sound so judgy. That’s an awesome idea, Valencia. Really. You should go for it. It’s never too late to decide on a dream.”

The irony doesn’t escape Valencia, how her friendship group is so mockingly still composed of people that on paper, she should have cut out of her life long ago.

“God, Paula,” she says, still prickly as she studies the bottom of her glass. “You were really awful to me in the beginning. I know Rebecca’s done some stuff, but yeesh. She had a couple of screws loose, but what’s your excuse? What did I ever do to you?”

“Reminded me of every girl I hated in high school?” Paula offers weakly. “Stood in the way of me living vicariously through Rebecca’s love life? I don’t know. In the beginning, I guess you just weren’t a real person. You were Velveeta. Valerio. Jean Valjeancia. To be fair, Rebecca came up with that one, not me, but then she tapped out because she said it was mean and she liked you and she wanted to be your friend.” Off Valencia’s sharp look she redirects her begrudging ramble to add, “In my defence, I thought she was lying! I thought she was just using you to get to Josh, and that you were a grade A bitch—a classic mean girl—and that she didn’t want to admit her motives, even to herself. I know it sounds terrible but you were kind of just… collateral?”

Deep down, before the whole thing at Spider’s, Valencia believed Rebecca when she’d insisted that despite everything, despite how it looked, she really just wanted to be her friend. Because Valencia saw in the other girl’s eyes a panicked desperation she recognised, for all the time she’d spent teaching herself how not feel it. She just hadn’t trusted it, because the undercurrent of silver-tongued insecurity that had tempered her every interaction with members of the same sex throughout her whole life lay waiting, ready to re-rear its ugly head the second Rebecca made the inevitable misstep. Keep your friends close, and any potential enemies even closer.

Back then she’d always thought that feeling was mostly jealousy—wanting what the other girl had, and what she was. Looking back now, she sees all the ways in which that envy could be tangled up in not just self hatred, but desire. That sometimes _wanting_ was for the more straightforward sake of wanting, than anything else.

And it had been so easy, to see what Josh Chan had been drawn to in Rebecca Bunch.

The childlike effusiveness offset by cleverness; how easily she threw her undivided attention and peculiar brand of generosity behind every whim. Her big fancy job and her oversized brain and boobs that filled out bras the way Valencia’s never could. Valencia wasn’t blind, either: if she let herself set aside her own impeccable standards for female beauty for a fraction of a second, she knew Rebecca could be considered attractive, with her Bambi blue eyes and cute little light brown curls and curves Valencia’s genes weren’t capable of creating. Back then, she’d tallied each and every one of those things and the conclusion had come back _threat._

But it’s not like Valencia has been carrying around a torch for Rebecca this whole time, because she hasn’t—it’s more like a light twinkling of something, barely there but that _maybe_ could be if you stared at it long enough, like the act of observation brought it into being, like a soft swipe of Shimmer Glimmer Cosmetics highlighter in _Illuminati_ across the cheekbones. Valencia loved Beth, independent of anything else. LovesBeth still, in that way that sharing your life with somebody for so long isn’t something you can just _switch off_.

“It’s just not fair, you know?” Valencia begins suddenly, not proud of how shrill she sounds. “That she has to keep making things so messy for me. I don’t like mess. I like plans, and binders, events that run smoothly without a single hitch. And then I meet Rebecca, and suddenly I’m not married, I’m not even with Josh anymore, and I’m planning weddings with runaway grooms and disappearing brides. So I made a new plan. _Beth_ was the plan. And then she wasn’t anymore, and I told myself I was okay with that, but then Rebecca comes along, _again_ , and—”

She pulls her mouth tight and turns away, tamping down on the tidal wave.

Paula sits up straighter, alarmed by the sudden subject change. “Well, just tell her that you’re not interested and move on,” she says, dismissive. “She’ll get over it. Look, you and I both know Rebecca doesn’t exactly process rejection well, but that has a lot less to do with _you_ and more—”

“And what makes you say I rejected her?” Valencia asks sharply.

Paula snorts. “You two were supposed to pack up your apartment and fly back from New York together. Instead Rebecca came home two days early with a stiff back from sleeping on her mother’s fold out couch—whatever it was, I’m guessing your reaction wasn’t exactly encouraging. Especially if it drove her to Naomi. And let’s not forget, this has happened before.”

_She didn’t tell her,_ Valencia thinks, the realisation lurching low in her wine-queasy stomach.

They’d been curled up together in her sardine-can Tribeca apartment, on her couch-slash-stowaway-bed, what had once been her kitchen now nothing more than a sink and a toaster surrounded by cardboard boxes, and Valencia had just finished recounting how she’d chewed out some asshole at the bank that had deigned to mess with a woman somewhat-scorned while she was closing out her joint checking account.

“Oh my god, that is so hot,” Rebecca had said in that low, inviting tone of voice she had, that so effectively evoked how laughably horny Rebecca Bunch was capable of being over the simplest of things, overt displays of female empowerment far from the most unusual.

“Hey, can I tell you a secret?” she'd gone on to giggle, tipping into Valencia, palm landing on her upper thigh.

Valencia had giggled, too—Rebecca was contagious, infectious in so many ways, and her laughter was no different. It felt fitting; Beth was the first person to ever tell Valencia she was funny, but Rebecca introduced her to the concept of humour.

“What?”

“Sometimes I think about how funny it would be if, like, you and I ended up together.” She threw up her hand, infuriatingly blasé, face scrunching around the strange taste of her own words. “Just, like, the irony of it all, you know? Like, how I moved here for Josh, and I was kind of the reason the two of you broke up, and how we should really hate each oth—”

_I kissed her to shut her up_ , Valencia thinks. _To stop her saying something dangerous._

But Rebecca had gone willingly, like she’d been waiting for this all along—fingers shooting out to tangle in Valencia’s hair, gripping her tight and holding her face to her own, sloppy and eager and not entirely sober as she pitched forward to press Valencia down into the couch.

For a fraction of a second, Valencia had still had the presence of mind to wonder if Rebecca had ever kissed a girl before—before Spiders, before tonight—or if she was in either case the first. She seemed like the type that could have tried it in college where she thought it didn’t count, after one too many wine coolers and a heated argument with her childhood adversary at a frat party where neither one of them felt they really belonged. Valencia had seen what Rebecca was like when she and her boss were butting heads—it wasn’t that much of a stretch to substitute in her infamous frenemy Audra Levine.

Then Rebecca’s free hand had gone to Valencia’s waist, fingertips digging into the exposed inch of skin above her jeans, snapping their hips together, and all Valencia could think was _I always knew she’d be bossy in bed._

Rebecca kissed the way she did most things—with the whole of her person, greedily and headfirst, blind confidence barreling its way past any pause for concern. Taking Valencia’s tentative exploration as in invitation and diving into it gladly, sweaty palms searching, sighing into her like she’d known somehow it had only been a matter of _time_.

“This is such a stupid idea,” Valencia mumbled against her mouth, and it tickled but it felt good, and Rebecca hummed her assent, and that tickled but it felt good, too. 

“So stupid. The stupidest.”

Then she’d felt the muscles tensing above her, felt Rebecca’s forehead creasing, brows knitting together where they were pressed against her own, and Rebecca had drawn back like she’d been doused in something Valencia couldn’t see as she pressed her fingers to her lips—like she couldn’t feel them there anymore, like she couldn’t trust their assessment that what they’d just done was real. 

Valencia had known what was coming before she even heard the words—felt it solidifying horribly in her stomach.

“I, um. I should probably go. I’ll just—I’ll get an Uber. My mom should still be up, it’s no big deal.”

Rebecca had fumbled for her belongings, panicked eyes downcast, wobbled on unsteady legs towards the hallway, and Valencia hasn’t heard from her since.

It’d be easier, if Rebecca were still the impossibly impulsive, unpredictable train wreck she once had been. Because then a kiss could be a mistake; an impromptu, impetuous, imprudent act born out of chaos and carelessness, and nothing else. But Valencia’s seen Rebecca learn and change and grow, and while she’s still entirely capable of those things, her newfound handle on them makes understanding her motives somehow more muddled than before.

Valencia is not impulsive. Valencia meal plans and sets price alerts and posts to Instagram when you’re supposed to get the most amount of hits.

Valencia’s not the one that needs therapy. She’s not the one that needs to _unpack._

“Rebecca goes through a lot of phases, okay,” she says eventually, “and this one has the potential to fuck a lot of things up.”

Paula winces in sympathy, slouching back in her chair, resting a weary face atop her palm. “I mean… yeah. It’s messy. Even before you factor in _all that_.”

She knows she’s not being fair, feeding the narrative Paula has concocted in her head, whether Rebecca placed it there herself or not. But the part of her that isn’t done processing _all that_ has taken the out it’s been offered and run with it, determined not to let that last shred of vulnerability—of _dignity_ , as if they’re one and the same—escape into the ether.

Her concerns remain regardless of who could claim responsibility of initiation.

“I was supposed to be staying with her until I found a new place, since AJ’s moved out and Heather’s old room is free, but now everything’s awkward and weird and we’re not talking. So it kind of feels like it’s already fucked up.”

“Please,” Paula says with a snort. “Like anybody could be rid of Rebecca that easy.”

Valencia had thought that, too, in those split seconds before Rebecca pulled away—how soft and warm Rebecca’s skin was, how long her hair was now and how good it smelled, and the stubborn sort of way she never let Valencia feel alone.

It’s not completely true, though, because the thing with Rebecca is that she’s always so entirely, maddeningly _there_ until she’s not—until she runs away to New York, until she goes to jail, until she takes a bunch of pills on an airplane and is almost gone for good. Rebecca does things with all of herself, and when she disappears, it’s not in halves. 

Rebecca hasn’t answered any of her texts or calls, and the worst part about it is how _familiar_ that spike of desperation feels.

Valencia has a tattoo on her ankle of an octothorpe—a hashtag symbol, in blue-black ink. She knows it’s called an octothorpe because Rebecca told her as much the first time she saw it, the corner of her mouth twisting as she’d traced over angry red of it, freshly carved. Valencia had gotten it after Rebecca had first been released from hospital, back when she’d needed to feel decisive, in control; like things could still stay put, and be permanent. She’s an Instagram fiend with a filter for a namesake, but the marking functions two-fold—it’s a reminder of her girls, four overlapping, interlocking life lines, and it still feels fitting, even now, that she should wear these women like a battle scar upon her skin. That friendship is something to be _endured,_ as well as _enduring_.

_Gurl group is for evah_ , she reminds herself, manicured fingernail scraping lightly across the strokes.

“You’re probably right,” she murmurs, even as she doesn’t wholly believe it.

“God, is that the time?” Paula asks, squinting at her watch. “Hon, you know I love you, and I’m here for you, no matter what, but I’ve also got to be up at six tomorrow, and—”

“You’re right, it’s really late,” Valencia agrees. “I’m still on New York time, anyway. We should go to bed.”

She doesn’t move, though, as Paula gathers their glasses and the plate and tucks the empty wine bottle into the crook of her arm. She doesn’t feel tired, not really, at least not in any sense that leaves her ready or wishing for sleep—it’s more of a weariness that’s settled over her, soul-deep. Paula shoots her a questioning look but leaves her with a squeeze of her shoulder before shuffling inside, focus shifting to balancing the cups clanking together where they’re hooked over her fingers and the cable knit blanket that’s trying to slip down off her shoulders. 

With the dark of night on her side and the alcohol currently fizzing through her veins Valencia’s tempted, almost, to text Beth, but she guillotines the thought before it can properly take hold. Instead her fingers slide across Rebecca’s names in her contacts, debating her own motives in this whole thing, going forward.

Is she looking for a rebound? Begging to be taken advantage of in her post-break-up bereavement? Or is it something else, something that’s been there all along?

What if she’s already opened Pandora’s box just by giving life to some tiny but wild and wanting thing inside of her, and now there’s no conceivable way of putting it back? 

Because it’s not technically clear if _something else_ is even an option. It’s like Paula said—two instances weren’t exactly evidence enough of a pattern. Being ready for love and being ready for _that kind_ of love are two different things _,_ Valencia understands.

She hasn’t showered since she left New York but it’s late and she can’t be sure how loud the pipes are in Paula’s house; she settles instead for a makeup wipe, unpacking her toiletries from her carry-on and lining them up along the side of Paula’s sink so she can observe her nightly skincare routine and make herself halfway human, at least. She relishes the light sting of the toner as she swipes it across her face and feels it sink into her pores, cleansing her of impurities.

By the time she’s changed into a clean t-shirt and gotten down on her hands and knees to search for an outlet to plug her charger into, it’s well after midnight, and her body is starting to feel the effects of its coast-to-coast pilgrimage, even if her brain refuses to give in. She pops a painkiller and leaves her water bottle in easy reach on the nightstand in an effort to circumvent any hint of an impending hangover, and tries to decide which of the books on the bedside table sounds the most boring in the hopes it might help lull her into some much-needed sleep.

Before she can make up her mind either way, her phone vibrates against the mahogany with an incoming text, startling an undignified yelp out of her and causing her to knock her head against the hard corner in the process. She claps a hand over her mouth as she moans in pain and tosses a guilty glance towards the door before crawling back onto the bed and unlocking the screen to check the notification.

It’s a message from Rebecca, and seeing the name on the screen drags her heart up into her throat.

Rebecca: _So…_

As the dancing ellipses cycle through in a torturous, drawn-out extension of Rebecca’s opener, Valencia almost throws the phone away from herself in impatience.

Rebecca: _Usually when I let someone kiss me like that, I make them take me out to dinner first._

Eyebrows shooting up her forehead at the unexpectedly brazen, no-holds-barred approach, Valencia slows herself with three deep, even breaths—a steadying mental asana.

_Not true_ , she types back without thinking, because her pulse is thrumming too loudly in her ears for her to do anything more.

Rebecca: _Yeah, you’re right._

Rebecca: _But_ _I guess now we’re even?_

Rebecca: _Nope, sorry. Too soon?_

Valencia: _Yeah._

She knows she should probably muster up something beyond a monosyllabic response, given how desperate she’s been for this conversation to take place, but her stomach still feels like it’s comprised of mostly salt water, half a bottle of wine having done nothing to dilute the uneasy waves. The _dot-dot-dot_ reappears to fill in the blank space of her indecision, and she waits so long the screen of her phone goes to sleep twice before it finally puts her out of her misery and lights up with a reply.

Rebecca: _Look, I’m sorry for cutting you off like that. I guess I thought I was done finding things out about myself, and I had to take some time to remember knowing who I am is never going to be, like, a definitive thing, you know? I’m always going to be a work in progress, and there’s always going to be new stuff to learn and adjust to along the way._

Valencia: _God, you’ve just spent the last three days watching lesbian porn, haven’t you?_

Rebecca: _Oh yeah. But like the female friendly stuff, without the sleazy music and the super scary sharp fake nails._

There’s the sound of a toilet flushing down the hall and through the walls, and Valencia freezes, holding herself comically still as she strains to listen for the sound of footsteps, as if at any second someone’s going to burst into the room and shout _impure thoughts about your best friend—busted!_ A few seconds later, though, the corridor of light winks out from underneath the door and her phone buzzes to re-command her attention.

Rebecca: _I’ve been trying this new thing where acknowledging something is a bad idea means that maybe I shouldn’t just do it anyway?_

Rebecca: _You just got out of an engagement. And I haven’t had sex in, oh, approximately eight hundred years._

Rebecca: _(These aren’t excuses, btw. Just… things that bear considering.)_

Valencia: _I get it._

She’s partway through composing an explanation of her own when the screen flips to an incoming call, the pattern of vibration insistent as it travels through her palm and into her body like a conduit, spiking white hot panic up her spine.

“Hello?” she says, voice simultaneously squeaky and low as she cups a hand around the receiver, mindful Paula and her husband are asleep across the hall.

“Hi,” Rebecca breathes.

There’s a still-uncomfortable silence, and a part of Valencia clenches in annoyance at Rebecca for dragging them out of the protective, liminal veil of text message, into something shaky and uncertain and _real_.

“You’re really important to me, Valencia,” Rebecca says after an eternal stretch of seconds, voice tiny like she’s telling a secret, and it feels all at once like it’s a profession, an apology and a promise. “I just wanted to make sure you know that.”

Exhaling in sharp relief, Valencia settles back against the frilly floral arrangement of decorative pillows, letting her eyes squeeze shut as Rebecca’s inability to stay quiet for longer than a short stretch of seconds at a time inevitably kicks in, barely pausing for breath before she launches into, to her credit, an only kind-of flustered recount of her encounter with Naomi, as if she’d merely gone for one of her usual reluctant visits, as if all the drama leading up to it were nothing at all. If it weren’t for the scratchy bedspread and the dim lighting of a guest bedroom that eclipsed Valencia’s New York apartment’s approximate square footage by half, it’d almost be as if they’d rewound to a week ago, and nothing had remotely changed.

She lets Rebecca nervously prattle on about traffic and check-in times and the exorbitant price of airport coffee until she runs out of steam, throwing in her agreement where appropriate. 

“So, uh… where do we go from here?” Rebecca asks eventually, voice uncharacteristically shy. “Do we hang out and see what happens? Engineer our own little meet cute? You give me a private yoga class and help me work on my downward dog?” Valencia cringes, and she hears Rebecca suck in a breath. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I am so bad at this. I don’t—”

“Dinner,” Valencia says, with more conviction than she feels. “I find somewhere else to stay, because us being housemates, no matter how temporarily, is an added layer of confusion we don’t need right now. And then we have dinner.”

“Oh. Okay.” Rebecca’s quiet for a moment, contemplative, and Valencia foolishly pictures her chewing her lip. A disappointed coo travels down the line. “I was really looking forward to being roommates, though.”

“So was I. But—”

“Yeah,” Rebecca cuts in on a rush, as if she can’t bear to hear her say it. 

The image in Valencia’s head twists further into focus—Rebecca curled up on her couch, knees tucked in beside her, phone cradled between her ear and shoulder to keep both hands free to pluck out her nervous energy like guitar strings on an unsuspecting blanket. She looks uncertain and small, and suddenly this whole situation seems a lot less scary.

“So. This dinner. Do we… dress up?”

The question catches her off-guard. “Uh, yeah,” Valencia intones anyway, as if it’s obvious. “A bitch better put on her best LBD for dinner with me. I’m not just anybody, you know.”

Rebecca laughs—a bright, easy, tinkling sound—and some coiled-tight thing inside Valencia loosens.

For the first time in four nights, she feels calm enough to sleep.


End file.
